genitive case

In nouns, possession is widely expressed by prefixes or suffixes indicating the person of the possessor. Thus, Karuk has nani-ávaha ‘my food,’ mu-ávaha ‘his food,’ and so on. (compare ávaha ‘food’). When the possessor is a noun, as in ‘man’s food,’ a construction like ávansa mu-ávaha ‘man…

…declension had seven cases: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, ablative, instrumental, and locative. However, many of these forms overlapped so that usually only three or four different forms existed; e.g., žam ‘time’ was both nominative and accusative, žamê was ablative, and žamu was genitive, dative, instrumental, and locative.

Theoretically, genitival endings indicating possession may be added to one another without limit. This is similar to the case in English of the button of the coat of the son of the Major of York; in Basque, however, the phrase of the is indicated by an…

Nouns in the possessive, or genitive, case possess or own other nouns. This is marked by -’s for singular nouns and irregular plural nouns (discussed below). Nouns that have regular plurals show possession with the addition of an apostrophe after the plural -s,…

…languages is the expression of possessive-marking in Oceanic languages. In many of the languages of Melanesia, nouns are marked for one of two types of possessive relationship, generally called “inalienable” and “alienable.” Inalienable categories include body parts, certain kinship relationships, and such “spiritual” aspects of an individual as his shadow…

Possession is indicated predominantly by prefixes or suffixes, and systems in which possessive forms are the same as those used as the subject of intransitive verbs and as the object of transitive ones are rather common. Classificatory affixes that subclassify nouns according to the shape…

…with the third- or second-person possessive suffix (Komi kerka-ys/yd ‘the house’ or ‘his/your house’).